Longmont Police closure of 1999 murder case is latest in series of solved mysteries

On Wednesday morning, a contingent of Longmont police and Boulder County prosecutors visited a prisoner at the Sterling Correctional Facility and told him he was being arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder in a 14-year-old case.

Abel Lujan, 46, replied, "I am invoking my right to an attorney," according to a police report detailing the visit.

Lujan is in prison on unrelated charges, but will be moved to Boulder County to face prosecution in the 1999 strangulation death of Bernie Frost, who was his girlfriend when she was killed and left in a walkway between 1303 and 1309 Coffman St.

Lujan is the latest in a string of cold-case arrests and prosecutions in recent years.

In January, a Boulder District judge sentenced George Ruibal in the December 2007 beating death of his girlfriend, Dana Pechin. Police arrested him 2011 after a grand jury reviewed the investigation and indicted him.

In 2010, Rudy Gaytan pleaded guilty to the 1993 murder of Tammera Tatum, who was strangled in her home and discovered by her husband. Her then 1-year-old daughter was in the room with her. DNA connected Gaytan, a friend of the family, to the crime. He is serving a 72-year prison term. He was already in prison after being convicted in the 1996 rape of a neighbor. DNA also solved that case.

In 2009, a Boulder County jury convicted Kevin Elmarr in the 1987 death of his ex-wife Carol Murphy. The Colorado Court of Appeals overturned that conviction, ruling that the district judge erred by disallowing evidence about an alternative suspect.

However, Elmarr remains in prison while prosecutors await a Colorado Supreme Court review of the lower court's decision. Even then, a new trial is possible.

Boulder Police have also seen the closure of cold cases and the Boulder County Sheriff's Office has closed several cases by identifying deceased suspects or, in one case, reclassifying a case thought to be a homicide as an accident.

Boulder District Attorney's Office prosecutor Ryan Brackley leads the office's efforts on cold cases and said the recent track record should send a message to offenders.

"We will put in resources and we will put in effort and we will put our training and experiences toward putting them to justice," he said.

While updates in DNA technology were lynchpins in the arrests and prosecution of cases like Gaytan's and Elmarr's, Brackely said Lujan's case was more reliant on police "pounding the pavement," working with prosecutors to develop cases that can be prosecuted and presented to juries.

Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett has focused on taking cases, old and new, to trial, he said.

"I want to have lawyers who are not afraid of going to trial and who are good at going to trial," Garnett said.

Trials allow juries and the public to see the details of the case and the evidence that landed a suspect in a defendant's chair.

A focus on trials "makes everyone involved in law enforcement better," because of the scrutiny, Garnett said.

Longmont police Cmdr. Jeff Satur said the department's relationship with the district attorney's office has helped considerably with cold-case investigations.

Brackley also pointed to that relationship.

"There has been a spirit of collaboration in Boulder County between law enforcement agencies and prosecutors that has never existed in this judicial district," he said.

Brackley is also a member of the state's cold case task force, a statewide group of police and prosecutors, that reviews cold cases to offer suggestions, tips and other ways of looking at cases that could lead to prosecutions. Lujan's case was presented to the task force in March.

Brackley said the office has prosecuted three cold cases after task force review.

"It is important to me that victims of cold cases and families of victims of cold cases know that they are not forgotten," he said.

With the Frost case off Longmont's books, the Longmont Police Department has only one unsolved death in which the suspect is likely to be alive. Jason Grimmer, 16, of Denver, was killed in a hit-and-run crash on the 2200 block of Main Street on New Year's Eve last year. The Boulder County Coroner's Office has ruled the cause of Grimmer's death as undetermined.

As the one-year anniversary of his death approaches, police are still seeking clues.

Satur said detectives may review much older cold cases, although the main suspects have since died. New DNA technology may be able to definitively link suspects in those cases. One case dates back to 1998 and another to 1980.

Four men are either suspected of or convicted in Longmont homicides that have been considered cold cases: top left, Abel Lujan; top right, Kevin Elmarr; bottom left, George Ruibal; and bottom right, Rudy Gaytan.
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